The battle over the 2000 Census continues. Republicans are urging the traditional head count. Democrats warn that such enumeration misses vast tranches of the American people -- particularly that subset of the American people that votes Democratic. So they urge scrapping traditional Census procedures and extrapolating through a process known as sampling.
Last week, Republicans began to complain about California Democrat Tony Coelho, the onetime House majority whip who resigned in disgrace during the savings-and-loan scandal. Coelho, now a lobbyist, is President Clinton's appointee as cochair of the bipartisan Census Monitoring Board. Coelho, Republicans say, is sabotaging the board's work in order to leave the field open for a Clinton-generated plan to put sampling into place. GOP Hill staffers even hinted they might subpoena Coelho to get him to reveal his government clients if he didn't get the committee moving.
The White House immediately counterattacked, warning in a press release that "children, the poor, people of color, city dwellers, and people who live in rural rental homes" are particularly susceptible to undercount. The stakes are high, says the White House press office, for the Census "is the basis for virtually all demographic information used by educators, policy makers, journalists and community leaders. America relies on Census data every day -- to determine where to build more roads, hospitals, and child care centers."
Okay, then. THE SCRAPBOOK hereby issues a challenge to the entire executive branch. If anyone in any department can name any instance at any time since the 1990 census in which a road, hospital, or child-care center was built in the wrong place because of faulty Census data, please let us know.